rectotec: November 2016

Recently, the British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC) published their annual incident report which showed 228 ‘reported’ incidents throughout the UK this season. And looking at the report there are repeated incidents that are seen year in year out, such as poor navigation, poor buddy awareness, incorrect use of equipment, oxygen toxity and out of gas to name a few. Luckily, most of them are very minor and without serious injury. After looking at the report one may think, “How did that happen? It’s obvious”, and afterwards it’s clear, but at the time, possibly not. But hindsight is always 20:20. But why did the incident occur? Were they taught incorrectly? Probably not, although it can happen. But unfortunately, sometimes we’ll never know. Human error, mistakes and bad decisions? In most cases. Again, but why? They weren’t trained to make that decision. One such factor could be the normalisation of deviance. Small steps away from the norm which at the time are very small, but afterwards are way off from our start point. Hence looking back, hindsight is 20:20. And if we’re all honest, we’ve probably all got away with things that we shouldn’t have done.

So why do we make errors that go against our training?

That is why Gareth has developed the Human Factors Skills in Diving course, or to be precise, courses. They’re designed to improve the knowledge, skills and safety of all divers and is aimed at instructors, instructor trainers and those undertaking higher risk diving such as technical divers and cave divers. But more of that later.

Who is Gareth?

Gareth Lock is a retired Royal Air Force senior officer Navigator of 25 years, who was both a senior supervisor and a tactical flight instructor on an operational C-130 flying squadron. He has a MSc in Aerospace Systems from Kingston University and in 2012, Gareth started his PhD, examining the role of Human Factors in SCUBA diving incidents at Cranfield University. As a diver Gareth is an Open Circuit advanced trimix diver (Technical Diver Level 2 with GUE) and normoxic trimix CCR diver (JJ-CCR with TDI). He is a keen underwater photographer, he’s had published work in diving magazines and journals, he’s presented at international diving conferences, he manages the Diving Incident and Safety Management System incident database, and has most recently been appointed GUEs Director for Risk Management.

Human Factors Skills in Diving - Micro Class

So what is the Human Factors Skills in Diving - Micro Class?

“Most diving accidents or incidents are not down to undetected failures or even detected failures, they are down to miscommunication, poor decision making, inexperience, peer pressure, poor teamwork...and yet none of the training courses formally teach this in an integrated manner. Improve your decision-making, situational awareness and communication to make your diving more fun, instruction more effective and diver safer in the process. This is a modular online course with more than 3 hours of engaging and detailed material split into 15 minute sections, with additional research-based resources provided for those who want to delve deeper.”

Technically I’ve done this course twice; once when it was first launched, and again a pre-learning for the Human Factors Skills in Diving - Two Day Course. But that is one of the beauties of the class, once you have your login, you can go back again and again and refresh your knowledge.

The course itself covers several topics:

1. Introduction.

Human error – We can’t avoid it.

2. Decision Making: Why we make good & bad decisions.

System 1 and system 2.

Checklists.

Normalisation of deviance.